Prognostic significance of epidermal growth factor receptor in locally advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma for patients receiving chemoradiotherapy

The aim of the current study was to investigate the prognostic significance of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) in patients with locally advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) receiving concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT). In total, 47 patients with locally advanced ESCC who were treated with CCRT were included in the present study. The chemotherapeutics comprised of 5-fluorouracil (750–1,000 mg/m2/day; days one to five) and cisplatin (30 mg/m2/day; days one to three) in combination with radiation therapy (~60 Gy), which was performed as the initial treatment. EGFR expression was compared with the clinicopathological features, local recurrence, metastasis status and overall survival (OS). Overall, EGFR overexpression (percentage of immunoreactive tumor cells, ≥50%) was identified in 59.6% of the patients. The median survival time (MST) of the EGFR-positive group was 15 months and the MST of the EGFR-negative group was 23.5 months. A significant correlation was observed between EGFR overexpression and poor OS (P=0.024). EGFR overexpression was found to exhibit a correlation with lymph node metastasis (P=0.011), but no correlation was identified with other clinicopathological features. In addition, a correlation was identified between OS and gender (P=0.021), age (P=0.018), depth of invasion stage (P=0.035) and tumor location (P=0.023). EGFR overexpression determined by pretreatment biopsy may be a clinically useful biomarker for predicting the OS of ESCC patients.